What Romans is to righteousness by faith, Song of Solomon is to romantic love. Tracing a couple’s infatuation, courtship, marriage, physical intimacy, conflict resolution and long-term deepening, as a comprehensive marriage manual the book is unmatched.

Job’s story dispels the myth of the “prosperity gospel”—that if you do good you will only experience God’s blessing. Many themes may be mined from Job’s story but the overarching one is that, bad things do sometimes happen to good people.

Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther are the only books which tell of the Jews’ postexilic history, and even these contain only small pieces of history with large gaps in between. Ezra and Nehemiah describe events early in the Persian reign ...

A theme of Chronicles is the re-establishment of Israel as a nation in the land that God promised them. Though written at a different time and from a different perspective, Chronicles covers the same time period as Samuel and Kings.

According to Jewish tradition, Samuel wrote the first 24 chapters of 1 Samuel, and Nathan and Gad wrote the remainder. Some scholars attribute the second part of 1 Samuel to Isaiah, but more likely the book was written shortly after 960 B.C.

Jewish tradition holds that Samuel wrote Judges, or Shophetim, but this theory cannot be proven. Whoever authored the book wrote sometime near the beginning of David’s reign, likely between 1045 and 1000 B.C.

The book of Joshua serves as a sequel of sorts to the Pentateuch, much the way Acts continues the story told in the Gospels. Its theme summed up in verse 21:45, Joshua portrays the fulfillment of God’s promises to Abraham and his descendants.

As its name suggests, the theme of Exodus is the Israelites’ movement from slavery in Egypt to independence in the wilderness, and the establishment of their religion and culture. The book tells how God begins to fulfill His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob by leading their descendants to the Promised Land.

Though Genesis does not name its author as do the other books of the Pentateuch, its language and writing style are similar enough to conclude that Moses wrote it as well, probably between 1440 and 1400 B.C.

Criticism abounds of the Bible’s historical accuracy, typically claiming a lack of outside sources confirming the Bible’s stories. Interestingly, few other historical documents are required to undergo such scrutiny, even those that also contain religious elements.